Article Thirty Six
by Telepwen
Summary: A difficult good-bye turns into a confessional for a boy that has never before spoken of his past to anyone. A response to the Gen Ficathon.


**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Darn. I wish I owned it. Then I could afford the things I need. I don't own the Book of Common Prayer, either.

**Author notes:** This is a response to the Gen Ficathon. I do not mean to offend anyone. If you are easily offended, please. Do not read this. Please. I am not out to start a flame war. The views expressed in this piece are for the sake of the piece, and do not reflect my own views. That is all.

Article Thirty-Six

"I've come to say goodbye."

_"..."_

"I can't come for you anymore. This is the last time we'll see each other for a long while."

_"..."_

"I can't even risk coming to visit. That May girl, Myrtle, was it? Yes. Myrtle May. I'm certain her ghost has settled in at the entrance here. I swear I heard her wailing when I came down today."

_"..."_

"As ironic as this may sound, Eithne, you are the first girl I haven't had disdain for. I wish there were some way that we could stay together. Some way that you could stay my girl. You're so beautiful.

"I regret losing you like this. You're the only one I can talk to."

_"..."_

"Humans don't understand. Serpents have always understood me, have always respected me. And you, dear Eithne, you are the Queen of them all. Funny that I can talk to you, a basilisk, but not to a human."

_"..."_

"Oh, please understand me now. If I didn't stop this, if I didn't close the Chamber, Dippet would send me back to the orphanage over the summer. He said it was the Ministry's talking about closing the school next term, but I know it's his own fear of being attacked, not the Ministry at all. The Ministry has nothing to do with it. He thinks that by sending me back there, he is sending me home, Eithne. He knows nothing of that place. I can't go back there."

_"..."_

"I never told you about that place, did I? Not really. Just that I had my reasons for hating Muggles. I grew up amongst them in the Stockwell Orphanage. For all intents and purposes, it really was my childhood home. It's not easy to get into that orphanage, you know. One of every six boys is rejected. I have no idea what my mother did to assure my place there. Neither, though, was it easy to live there."

_"..."_

"Well, Eithne, it's hard to explain. I've never talked about it to anyone before. Where do I start?"

_"..."_

"I know. The beginning. First, you need to know that Muggle orphanages are very Christian places. If there was an exception to this rule, Stockwell was as far from it as was possible. We were raised to be good little Protestant boys so that the Church could be proud. After all, a lot of the funding for the orphanage comes from the Church, you know. Have to give them a good reason to keep giving it. They tried not to be biased toward the Church of England, claiming to be "non-sectarian", but it was obvious even to the most idiotic of us that they were miserable failures at this.

"I was, as were most of the boys there from birth, hopelessly caught up in all of it. Hard not to be, really. We attended daily prayers, learned religious music, and even studied Latin. When we had our military drills each day, they told us that the discipline it taught us would be useful to us in our religious life. It was during a depression, and while the economy was at an all time low, religion and faith were at an all time high. Today the Muggle world is at war, and I'm glad not to be a part of it anymore, but even then, we could sense the war coming. It all added in to make the environment almost fanatical."

_"..."_

"Enter a young wizard who does not know his heritage. I could not explain my accidental magic to anyone; I was as mystified and confused by it as anyone. When I accidentally made the hymnals sing on their own in four-part harmony, I was as terrified as the other boys. When I accidentally muted a hated scholar, I was horrified."

_"..."_

"Well, I didn't know I was a wizard yet, did I? I was perfectly in my right to be horrified! Not another word about that! If I knew then what I know now, I would have rejoiced, but I didn't."

_"..."_

"Thank you. Now, as I was saying, I don't remember my first bout of accidental magic, but I know the stories of it. I was hardly a year old when I made a particular toy I wanted fly across the room to me. If I could have stopped my magic as a child, I would have done it. It frightened the other boys, but not so much as it frightened the patrons of the orphanage."

_"..."_

"The patrons? They ran everything. The patrons and the matrons. Each house at Stockwell had a matron to look after the boys. The matron of my house was a sweet Irishwoman named Eithne Molony. A devout Catholic, it was she that first pointed an accusing finger at me warning, 'You have the Devil in you, boy.'

"She was never sweet to me. Even when I was the only one that could properly pronounce her name, a delicate cross between en-ah and en-yeh--some of the boys butchered it so badly--she said it wasn't natural that my English tongue should be able to work the Gaelic syllables so well. It was more devilry, she said. I took to calling her Matron Molony to please her, but even that made her wary."

_"..."_

"Yes, I did, you catch on fast. I did name you after her; it was mostly for irony's sake."

_"..."_

"Back to my story, I spent much of my youth as the target of the other boys. Not only did the patrons look the other way, they actually encouraged as much cruelty as the boys could send my way. Young boys are the cruelest creatures in the world, Eithne. Even when they feared me, they mocked me and laughed and jeered. They called me Eve because I spoke to serpents and warned me not to eat any apples."

_"..."_

"I hid from the boys in the chapel whenever I could get there. The only problem was that Matron Molony would catch me there and chase me out. 'I'll not have you defiling the house of God by bringing your devil in there!' she'd hiss at me. It was bad enough, in her eyes, that I was allowed, let alone required, to attend daily prayers. In spite of this, though not in spite of her, I took sanctuary in the chapel whenever I could get there behind her back.

_"..."_

"Well, I read what was at hand to pass the time, of course. What else would I do? I prayed for respite to come, and I read. I knew the Book of Common Prayer inside and out. I could recite every word of it. I knew the rituals for birth and baptism, for communion, for marriage, for the burial of the dead. I knew the lives of every saint and I knew all the holy days, even the obscure ones. I knew every psalm and prayer by heart. I knew how deacons and priests and bishops were ordained. Ordination truly interested me. We never had a proper priest. Only a chaplain. Everything was there in black and white in our Book of Common Prayer. But nothing about people like me. Tainted people. People with devils in them."

_"..."_

"When Matron Molony would chase me out of the chapel, I fled to the library and pored over my studies, becoming fluent in Latin by age seven. I started to study French on my own when I was not permitted to join the older boys. By age nine, I had read every book in the library. The scholars who taught me thought I was charming at least, if a bit odd."

_"..."_

"I knew how to charm the scholars. They knew that the patrons disliked me, but I was their best student. I would ask for extra assignments and study extracurricularly, desperate to find something in the texts that would indicate what was wrong with me. While the other boys played, I studied. To look at me, you would not see a child at all, but a tired student. I thought that if I could find the root, I could weed it out. Soon, after exhaustive reading, I came to believe that there was nothing to be found that had not already been identified."

_"..."_

"I had the Devil in me. It was clear. It was a very rare thing, but what else could explain what we all had seen? Exorcism was a Catholic thing, and I paled at the thought as a good Anglican let alone as a possessed victim. As I saw it, there was only one thing for it."

_"..."_

"It's not obvious, I know. I'm getting there. Patience.

"Even though it said nothing in the Book of Common Prayer about people like me, I knew that there had to be something I could do. It was a strange connection for me to make, in retrospect, Eithne. It was in the Litany that I picked up on a strange line.

_Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thine honour_.

"So it wasn't for our deliverance, or for the sake of helping us. It was for the sake of God's honour. If our Lord and Saviour didn't do it, He lost face. Which, to me, meant that He lost face if He didn't help me, no matter how cursed I may have been. I was asking for something extraordinarily large, though. I reasoned that I had to do something extraordinarily large in return."

_"..."_

"I've never told anyone about this, Eithne."

_"..."_

"You're the first. Probably the last, as well."

_"..."_

"I started studying toward the priesthood. With every fibre of my being, I knew that if I could only dedicate my life to God, it would somehow purify me of the satanic influences that plagued my life. That somehow, I would cease to be an abomination.

"I studied in secret. No one knew. If Matron Molony had ever found out, she probably would have killed me on the spot. My studies began when I was ten. They ended the day I received my letter."

_"..."_

"Well, what did you expect? That I'd continue toward that once I learned my true heritage? That letter held every answer I'd ever craved."

_"..."_

"No, they weren't the answers I'd hoped for. But I had spent enough time searching for the truth, that I knew it when I saw it."

_"..."_

"Yes, I was coming into my heritage. And slowly I came to understand that not only was I normal for who and what I was, but I was better than those around me who had condemned me for so long. I looked at my foolish desire to join the priesthood, and I laughed. Suddenly, I could see the bigger picture that I had been missing for eleven years."

_"..."_

"Of course, the witch who came to help me through my transition had no idea what my bloodline is. As far as she knew, I was just another Muggleborn Mudblood. The blood in my veins purifies out any dirt, though. You're proof of that, aren't you?"

_"..."_

"You'd never follow me if I had any mud left in my blood."

_"..."_

"I will do it, you know. I will clean out the rest of the dirt from this world. Once, they tried to teach me that the dirt was within me. Oh, no. They are the stain. I will wipe them clean."

_"..."_

"Yes, I know. I wish we could do it together. Someday, maybe I can come back for you. Don't you understand now why I can't go back there, Eithne? Why I have to let Dippet think that everything is safe again?"

_"..."_

"When I am Lord and Saviour of this world, the abominations will be those that aren't born with devils inside them. That is what I promise you this day, Eithne. I promise that to you, I promise that to Eithne Molony--wherever she may be."

_"..."_

"It seems I will be that priest after all."

**Author notes:** Article of Religion XXXVI: _Of Consecration of Bishops and Ministers._

The Book of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops and ordering of Priests and Deacons, lately set forth in the time of _Edward_ the Sixth and confirmed at the same time by authority of Parliament, doth contain all things necessary to such consecration and ordering; neither hath it anything that of itself is superstitious or ungodly. And therefore whosoever are consecrate or ordered according to the rites of that book, since the second year of King _Edward_ unto this time, or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the same rites, we decree all such to be rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated or ordered.  
(Oh, and the challenge was: Tell a secret about Tom that nobody knows. In case you were wondering. To think that I just as easily could have written that he liked to dance about in pink feather boas.)


End file.
